NAME

  Char - Multibyte Character Support by Traditional Scripting

SYNOPSIS

  # encoding: sjis
  use Char;
  print "Hello, world wide market!\n";

  # "no Char;" not supported

DESCRIPTION

  The Char software provides multibyte character-oriented Perl environment
  by traditional Perl scripting.

  - Character oriented regular expression
  - Character oriented runtime routines
  - Character oriented subroutines
      and
  - Byte oriented CORE::* functions
  - Byte oriented regular expression on /b modifier

  Information processing model beginning with Perl3 or this software.

    +--------------------------------------------+
    |    Text string as Digital octet string     |
    |    Digital octet string as Text string     |
    +--------------------------------------------+
    |       Not UTF8 Flagged, No Mojibake        |
    +--------------------------------------------+

  In UNIX Everything is a File
  - In UNIX everything is a stream of bytes
  - In UNIX the filesystem is used as a universal name space

  Native Encoding Scripting
  - native encoding of file contents
  - native encoding of file name on filesystem
  - native encoding of command line
  - native encoding of environment variable
  - native encoding of API
  - native encoding of network packet
  - native encoding of database

INSTALLATION

  Just copy Char.pm to your @INC directory.
  For example, to C:\Perl\site\lib on Microsoft Windows or other DOS-like
  systems.

SUBROUTINES

  Old Days -- memories are always beautiful.

    Functions of
    Byte and SBCS -- Traditional Perl Script
    -------------
    eval
    length
    substr
    ord
    reverse
    getc
    index
    rindex
    pos
    m//
    s///
    split //
    tr///
    qr//
    -------------

  Today -- some memories are beautiful, others are not.
           (I don't say what are not;)
                                           ***************                   
    Byte Oriented     Character Oriented   * Casual      *        Traditional
    Functions     vs  Subroutines      --> * Char Script * nearly Perl Script
    -------------     ----------------     ***************        -----------
    eval          vs  Char::eval       --> * Char::eval  * is not eval       
    length        vs  Char::length     --> * length      *   is   length     
    substr        vs  Char::substr     --> * substr      *   is   substr     
    ord           vs  Char::ord        --> * ord         *   is   ord        
    reverse       vs  Char::reverse    --> * reverse     *   is   reverse    
    getc          vs  Char::getc       --> * getc        *   is   getc       
    index         vs  Char::index      --> * index       *   is   index      
    rindex        vs  Char::rindex     --> * rindex      *   is   rindex     
    pos           vs  (nothing)        --> * pos         *   is   pos        
    m//b          vs  m//              --> * m//         *   is   m//        
    s///b         vs  s///             --> * s///        *   is   s///       
    split //b     vs  split //         --> * split //    *   is   split //   
    tr///b        vs  tr///            --> * tr///       *   is   tr///      
    qr//b         vs  qr//             --> * qr//        *   is   qr//       
    -------------     ----------------     ***************        -----------

  - Data typing by switching operators, as traditional Perl style
  - Text data by Character Oriented Subroutines
  - Binary data by Byte Oriented Functions
  - /b modifier was introduced via JPerl
  - Multibyte Character Support by Traditional Scripting, in almost all cases

ENCODING FAMILY

  Arabic, Big5HKSCS, Big5Plus, Cyrillic, EUCJP, EUCTW, GB18030, GBK, Greek,
  HP15, Hebrew, INFORMIXV6ALS, JIS8, KOI8R, KOI8U, KPS9566, Latin1, Latin10,
  Latin2, Latin3, Latin4, Latin5, Latin6, Latin7, Latin8, Latin9, OldUTF8,
  Sjis, TIS620, UHC, USASCII, UTF2, Windows1252, and Windows1258

SUPPORTED OPERATING SYSTEMS

  Apple Mac OS X, HP HP-UX, IBM AIX, Microsoft Windows, Oracle Solaris,
  and Other Systems

SUPPORTED PERL VERSIONS

  perl version 5.005_03 to newest perl

SEE ALSO

  http://search.cpan.org/~ina/
  http://backpan.perl.org/authors/id/I/IN/INA/